When he who flouted the Church, or doubted, would find his neck fast in hempen ruff, And saint and sinner thought eggs for dinner and beer for breakfast the proper stuff; When men were scary of witch and fairy, of haunted castle, of spook and elf, When every mixer of cough-elixir was thought a vassal of Nick himself; When income taxes and prophylaxis and Comic Sections were yet unborn, When Leagues of Nations and Spring Vacations and Fall Elections were held in scorn— When all brave fellows would fight duellos with sword and dagger, with lance and mace, When good men guzzled until, clean fuzzled, they’d reel and stagger about the place; When pious journeys and jousts and tourneys brought high adventure and secret tryst, When knives were many, but forks not any—’twas fist to trencher, and mouth to fist!— Oh, men had chances for true romances, for fame and glory, and knightly acts ... (And childish quarrels and beastly morals, if song and story would stick to facts!) _Franklin P. Adams_ Franklin P. Adams, better known to the readers of his column as F. P. A., was born at Chicago, Illinois, November 15, 1881. He attended the University of Michigan (1899-1900) and, after a brief career as an insurance agent, plunged into journalism. Adams had already been an ardent contributor to B. L. T.’s “A Line o’ Type or Two” and, in 1903, he began conducting a column of his own on the Chicago _Journal_. Late in 1904, he came to New York, running his “Always in Good Humor” section on _The Evening Mail_ until 1914, when he started “The Conning Tower” for the New York _Tribune_. Adams is the author of five volumes of a light verse that is not only skilful but energetic as well as facile. _Tobogganing on Parnassus_ (1909), _In Other Words_ (1912), _By and Large_ (1914), _Weights and Measures_ (1917) and _Something Else Again_ (1920) reveal a spirit which is essentially one of mockery. One admires these books for their impudent—and faithful—paraphrases of Horace and Propertius, for their last line twists _à la_ O. Henry, (with whom Adams wrote a comic opera that never reached New York), for the ease with which their author springs his surprises and, perhaps most of all, for the healthy satire that runs sharply through all of his colloquial and dexterous lines. WAR AND PEACE “This war is a terrible thing,” he said, “With its countless numbers of needless dead; A futile warfare it seems to me, Fought for no principle I can see. Alas, that thousands of hearts should bleed For naught but a tyrant’s boundless greed!” · · · · · · Said the wholesale grocer, in righteous mood, As he went to adulterate salable food.